Section 1: 
Five Accepted Beliefs that
Rob You of Your Prosperity

Chapter 1: 
Belief #1
Success and Prosperity Will Corrupt Me

     This is a skinny book and we have a lot to cover, so let’s get right to it. The first of these five generally accepted beliefs that will rob you of your prosperity is the thinking that success and prosperity will corrupt me. At least that is what many people think. Some will even go on to add another thought which says, “All really wealthy people must have turned away from God to be so well off and I do not want to do that.”

     Yes we all know that there are people who have been corrupted by success and wealth; we see it in the world around us and in the scriptures. But the question we should ask is “Does it have to be this way?” The answer to that question is NO. We can see examples of people who have been successful and become very wealthy, often obtaining that wealth with God’s help, both in the Bible and in today’s society. So, we do have the right to question the belief that success and prosperity corrupts. If we see that it can be done the right way, with even one person, we have to stop and say, “Maybe what I have been taught is not the whole truth.”

     Part of the problem in the public arena is that the bad situations get all the publicity. When corruption does surface, it is spread all over the 5 o’clock news. In addition, when it comes to the scriptures, people talk about select verses that back their point of views about corruption without covering the positive examples or looking at the big picture.

     One of the main sections that I hear most often is in The Gospel of Luke, chapter eight. In this parable, Jesus Christ talks about a sower sowing his seed. One of the examples he gives says, “And that which fell among thorns are they which when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection.”

     People will use these verses to prove their position and say, “See, they were choked with the cares, riches and pleasures of this life”. The obvious conclusion then is, if you want to have a spiritual life you should not get mixed up with the cares, riches and pleasures of this life, because they will corrupt you.

     There is actually another verse in the Gospel of Mark that gets even more graphic in its description. Mark 4:19 says, “And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.”

     That is what the verse says, but we need to look at the whole picture and not just one verse. Yes, that can happen if someone allows it to happen. We have seen people to whom it has happened. Does that mean that it is absolutely going to happen in every case? No. All we have to do is look at a few other examples in the scriptures to see that there were wonderful men and women that did prosper, that did have abundance, that did have great wealth, and yet they were not choked by it. They were fruitful in their lives. They were not corrupted by their success. They simply lived their lives and God prospered them.

     Abraham is a well known figure in the Bible from a number of different standpoints. He is a focal point of the Jewish, Muslim and Christian faiths. Abraham is a wonderful example of someone who walked with God and prospered. In Genesis 13:1 it says, “And Abram went up out of Egypt, he and his wife, and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the south. And Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold.”

     Abraham was very rich in gold, silver and cattle. Yet, he was not corrupted by any of it. Abraham is an example of one who had great wealth, while keeping a spiritual connection with God.

     Another example was Job and the record about him says, “There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil. And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters. His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all men of the east.”

     It says at the very beginning of the record that he was upright, perfect, and feared God. He was another man with great wealth, massive possessions and yet he was not corrupted by it. He did not leave God to amass his wealth and success, in fact just the opposite.

     I have given you two examples and there are others. Even one example should make us stop and reconsider this belief that all wealthy people are Godless and corrupted.

     If someone is worried about being corrupted, they really should be asking another question and that question is “Does God even favor prosperity?” If God does not want us to prosper then the discussion should end right there.

     To answer this question, we need some background.  So let’s look at Romans 2:4, “Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?”

     That word “repentance” means a change of heart. Here it says that it is the “…goodness of God” that leads us to a change of heart. God want His goodness to bring people to Him, not His anger, not His wrath, and not what so many others may teach. If that is true, which I believe it is, then we need to go back into the pages of the Bible and find the records that show us this goodness.

     I believe He does want us to prosper.  I believe God does favor prosperity, abundance and wealth. Through the ages God showed His goodness by prospering those that came to Him. So let’s start by looking at the very first example in the book of Genesis. Here it talks about the creation of the garden. It talks about Adam and Eve. It talks about God putting them in this beautiful garden filled with all goodness and wonder. It says at the end of the first chapter of Genesis that, “…God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good.”

     It then goes on to talk about the gold in the land as well as onyx and beautiful stones and of all the abundance of this garden. God created this beautiful place, created Adam and Eve and placed them in it. He then told them to be fruitful, multiply and to freely enjoy all they had been given.

     So another question arises and hopefully, by now, you are getting used to questions because we need to ask, we need to think. Somebody should raise his or her hand and say, “Wait a minute. What did Adam and Eve do to deserve the garden? What did they do to deserve to be in such a bountiful, wonderful, and plentiful place?”

     The obvious answer to the question is that they did not do anything. They had just been created. They could not have done anything to earn or deserve it. Perhaps the cynical mind might say, “Well, this was God’s first dealing with mankind so He wanted to get off to a good start. He wanted to see what man would do with it, so He gave them the best right off the bat.”

     Okay, well let’s look at another incident. This one happens to be in the book of Exodus. God said, “I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt unto the land of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.”

     The children of Israel had been praying for deliverance from captivity in Egypt for hundreds of years. They had been slaves in Egypt for many generations. They had been praying to God to take them out of there. God came to them by way of Moses and said, “I will take you out of here. And I will bring you into this land flowing with milk and honey.”

     Now here’s the interesting part. They had asked to be set free, to be delivered from the bondage of Egypt and God answered that prayer. Then He went beyond that promise and brought them to this prosperous land. So did God look down on the nation of Israel and favor them because of their undying love, devotion, service and trust in Him as their God? Well, let’s see.

     In Exodus chapter 14, Moses has just brought them out of the land of Egypt and they were on the shore of the Red Sea. Pharaoh decided that he had made a mistake. He sent his troop to bring them back. If you saw the movie, you know the scene that I am talking about. Pharaoh and all of his troops were coming down upon the children of Israel back and the children of Israel were backed up to the Red Sea and had no where to run.

     If they had been a trusting people who loved their God, they would have simply turned to God and said, “You can get us out of this. You got us out of Egypt. You can get us out of this mess too.” Yet, what they said was quite different, “And they said unto Moses, ‘Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt? Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness.”

     Does that sound like a people that trusted their God? Does that sound like a people that deserved the Promised Land? This seemingly harsh rejection did not faze God or Moses. Moses stood on the bank of the Red Sea, parted the waters and then it says the children of Israel walked across to the other side.

     After they had crossed the Red Sea and were on the other side, the armies of the Egyptians tried to cross as well, but you will remember that the walls of water came down upon the Egyptian host and they were all lost.

     Some people have looked at this and said, “Really, what happened was a natural phenomenon. Moses found a certain land bridge that was more like a sand bar. They say that the tide went out and that the wind happened to be blowing that night, so the sand bar dried up enough that they could cross over on this land bridge. So really, what Moses crossed over on, was no more than a mud puddle.”

     Again, as a thinking person, I would have to look at that and say, “Fine, if that is the way you would like to start the story, okay. Then you are going to have to explain to me how all the host of Egypt as well as all of their chariots, horses, and soldiers drowned in a mud puddle. You cannot have it both ways. The record says that they came to the sea, they crossed it, the Egyptians chased after them and the Egyptians were lost. It says that the entire massive army, one of the greatest armies in the world at that time, was lost and washed up on the shore. The children of Israel saw that army defeated. So, was it in the sea or was it in a mud puddle? I don’t care which way you answer it, but you have to answer it one way or the other.”

     Certainly, you would think by now, that the children of Israel would have been devoted, loyal servants to God with no more complaints and would have understood His goodness and graciousness toward them. Well, let’s look at Exodus 16:1, “And they took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came unto the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt. And the whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness: And the children of Israel said unto them, ‘Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.’”

     At this point, they were complaining about not having any food in the wilderness. This is the time when God gave them manna and provided for them once again, not because they were so good, not because they were so righteous, but simply because of His goodness and His kindness. There is more to this record, but you get the picture.

     He finally brought them into the Promised Land. But once again, my question would be why? What did Israel do to deserve this? The answer obviously is they did absolutely nothing. It is not about how good Israel was, it is about the goodness of God.

     Okay, we have seen God’s care. We have seen that God wants to give because of His goodness and not ours; because it is His nature to give and not because we have done something to earn it. So, yes God definitely favors prosperity.

     People say that abundance corrupts. It was not abundance in the Garden of Eden or in the Promised Land that corrupted people. Abundance was not the problem. The problem was disobedience in both cases. Adam and Eve disobeyed in the garden and the children of Israel disobeyed in the Promised Land.

     God wants us to prosper and it can be done in an ethical and moral way without turning away from God. Later I’m going to show you even more on this subject but for now, let me ask you, if you previously held this belief that success, prosperity and wealth corrupts, do you still think that it’s true? Do you still think that those who have become wealthy have turned away from God? I certainly hope not, but don’t worry I have a lot more to show you.

     The belief that wealth and success corrupts will rob you of your prosperity until you let it go and accept the belief that God favors prosperity AND that He wants you prosper abundantly.